Chosen family is a topic we don’t hear a lot about in the tarot community. It has resurfaced with Pose on FX. Pose begins with helping the viewer understand what it’s a queer necessity for survival to be a part of a House or chosen family. They are not one in the same, but they are interrelated.
A lot of queer people respond and relate to this. Even our straight allies go through the experience of discovering there is family beyond their blood relatives. But it is especially important to the queer community.
Close Friends & Privilage
You might notice this type of choosing in school. When you start discovering who your friends are and who’s with you through all the crazy things that happen when we’re growing up. The secrets we forget through time but were catastrophic back then. They create bonds.
When you go to college and leave home for the first time you go through another vetting of sorts. Your people may be chosen for you (dorm) or you may have the opportunity to choose your people (major). Either way, you’re starting to build a local family. The people you want to get back to when your Christmas break is over.
What’s unique about both of these rites of passage is that they are rites of privilage. You have the ability to choose your groups with safety. There’s somewhere to go back to. There’s other opportunities to explore on campus.
Chosen Family Is Survival
As a member of the queer community expressing who you truly are as an individual, that safety net probably didn’t exist, did it? If it did, fear of rejection was and is still very valid. It’s that rejection, that lack of safety net that makes chosen family all the more valuable for basic needs and survival.
The family you choose includes people who are there for you in challenging times. It also includes people who are there for you in the best times. It’s stronger than just friends like you had in high school and college. This family becomes that support network that is there for you when you are away from or no longer have a home.
Family you begin to choose becomes especially important when home no longer wants you. Or when home no longer exists. When you’re out on your own and you don’t have some place to call home, chosen family becomes home.
Home Is Where You’re From, Isn’t It?
You even start to verbalize and say home is where the family you selected is rather than owning where you may have been raised. So even, for example, I’m from Oregon. I will always tell people I’m from Oregon. But I’ve lived in Chicago for half of my life. So I’m equally from both places. And my husband’s family (one of my chosen family) is here. My friends (chosen family) from the last 20 years are here.
Once marriage become legal for the queer community in 2014, my husband and I were married. While I had accepted his family (and they me) as chosen family long before, now we have went through a ceremony to solidify that. And we’re lucky, we’ve chosen both of our families and they’re both pretty amazing.
Searching For Family
When I moved to Chicago I left a powerful and strong chosen family of gay men. It was solid and supportive. We met for “church†every Sunday and a local tavern. We met for brunch occasssionally at someone’s house. We celebrated milestones and losses. We mourned each other when one of us passed.
So I was looking for queer chosen family in Chicago. When I moved here I was in graduate school and the only (so I thought at the time) queer person in my graduate class. So I distanced my self and looked queer family outside of school. That was really hard to do even though I lived in Boystown and Andersonville at the time. Both very gay populations.
Once I moved away from those spaces it became much harder to look for queer chosen family. And I still experience that today. I share this to say that finding your family isn’t easy and it takes work.
Why We NEed Chosen Family
So the way I experience chosen family today is much different that I did in my 20’s. I needed chosen family then to help bring me up. They taught be about responsibility to community, support of each other, what happens in the Eagle on jockstrap night, and the gay history and sexual liberation behind the sling on the ceiling. Today I need chosen family to be a different kind of support system as our relationships and bodies age.
Still others need chosen family for more than just education and emotional support. Their basic needs may only be met with the family you chose. They may be how you survive. Providing food, shelter, and care.
Now more than ever I’ve learned that my queer family spans states and countries. We’re a queer network of people that are here for each other. And we need to be.
Family Relationships
Still, not all of our blood families are engaged with us living our truths. Because most queer relationships are not producing or adopting children, there isn’t a second layer of family that are coming up to care for those that are aging. That means we have each other and there is, more often than not, an unspoken understanding that we will be there for each other.
Chosen family builds in those fail safes and trust. The hardest thing about chosen family is the relationships within. You may not always understand where someone is coming from or vice versa. As our relationships shift and change and our lives grow, chosen family sometimes shifts and changes based on distance and or needs.
So chosen family isn’t a ride or die or blood is thicker than water type of thing. It’s a – here’s what we need from each other right now and we’ll be with each other as long as is necessary. That’s how I see chosen family.
Family Relationships Take Work
So when chosen family relationships are challenging or they sour what do you do? I wish that I had tarot when I was looking for chosen family. It’s kinda like a lie detector test.
Tarot can help discover the strengths and weaknesses of relationships within your chosen family. It can help you better understand the unknowns or the shadow side of those relationships. Or even what’s expected of you! The personal insights here position you in a place of power for curating your best chosen family and managing your place in it effectively.
The personal insight and guidance that tarot provides is perfect. The energy a reading creates to fuel your drive to find the best chosen family for you can be so inspiring. And when you’ve got some next steps in your corner along with that, you’re 3/4 of the way to having a chosen family for the ages.
Having a tarot reader to reach out to that can help you work through these questions and relationships is so important! I wish that I’d had a reader at the time to guide me. Finding the best reader for you isn’t always easy though. It took me 20 years to find a reader I liked. Hopefully it won’t take you that long!
Chosen family is necessary
You can’t always be with your blood family. It will help you thrive and survive. It will take you places you could never get on your own. So I do hope that you’re finding chosen family. If you are and you need a little insight because you’re not quite sure where you stand or how you can serve the relationship better, then maybe it’s time to think about getting a tarot reading. Especially one that will help you grow your relationships sooner, faster, and stronger.